This disc brings together three of the key English song-cycles of the 20th
Century and it combines one of our finest tenors with an ensemble whose gifts
are uniquely suited to this music. In the end, though, I found it a little
patchy. The anchor of the set is the playing of the Britten Sinfonia, whose
strings are outstanding throughout. They have chosen an ensemble of just the
right size which fits brilliantly in the soundscape, and the engineers have
judged the acoustic just right. They have also captured the correct balance
so that singer and instrumentalists are caught in just the right proportion.
Stephen Bell’s horn playing at the beginning of the Serenade
sounded a little raw to my ears, however. I’m sure it was an artistic
decision rather than a consequence of unpolished preparation, but to my ears
it was an ill-judged one, not an auspicious start to the disc, though it’s
one he corrects for the final off-stage Epilogue. Mark Padmore is an excellent
tenor, equally accomplished on the operatic stage as on the concert platform.
You would think that he would be a top choice for Britten songs. Throughout
the Serenade, however, he struggles to balance the dramatic and the
lyrical sides of his voice so that too often he underplays the expressiveness
of the writing. He sings with less of the honeyed beauty that he is famous
for and more incisive bite, which works for some songs, such as the Dirge,
but not so well for others, such as the opening Pastoral. However,
this does have the advantage of lending his word-painting that extra edge:
listen, for example, to the way he articulates “dying” in Nocturne
or “sick” in Elegy. Likewise, in the gently throbbing introduction
to this song the blend of the horns and strings is exceptional. Both playing
and singing are at their most alluring in the concluding Keats Sonnet, seductive
and beautiful with a hint of danger, leading wonderfully into the softly dying
horn epilogue.

Dies Natalis is also very good, but variable for the same reasons.
The strings sound glorious in the pastoral lyricism of the Intrada
and the sound is excellent, bringing them present but not too close, with
lovely light on the inner textures, especially the violas. Padmore takes a
while to settle in, though. For the last two songs he gets the mix of lyricism
and innocence just right, depicting the child’s vision of the world
with wide-eyed beauty. He doesn’t quite nail this for the first two
songs, though. His singing sounds consciously affected rather than showing
the naivety of the art that conceals art, in fact sounding much too, well,
grown-up! Everyone has a much better time in the Nocturne, however,
surely the greatest of all English song-cycles. Padmore judges this one just
right, responding to the mood of each poem with vocal colour that is innocent,
beautiful, frenzied or comical as required. The solo “obbligato”
instruments all sound fantastic too, each having a whale of a time in its
moment in the sun. The description of the “lovely boy” in the
Coleridge poem is almost too alluring to be comfortable, and the use of the
harp for this song is sensational, sitting perfectly in the soundscape of
the recording. The cycle rises to a powerful dramatic climax at Wordsworth’s
reflection on the September Massacres, the timpani sounding as though they
are beating on the inside of the insomniac’s brain, and the Owen song
has a wonderfully alluring cor anglais. The final Shakespeare setting is a
triumphant culmination, a celebration of the power of dreams played with appropriate
majesty and sung with rapt intensity.

So there is a lot to enjoy here and this disc is undoubtedly very good; however
Padmore’s slightly inconsistent approach means that, for me, it falls
short of the - admittedly very high - hopes I had for it. For the Britten
at least, Bostridge with Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic still win the
prize for brilliant singing and outstanding word-painting with perfectly judged
accompaniment.